No, Elon, NO! (part one)

brain downloading and brain uploading are never going to happen

Part one of two, examining wild claims around merging actual human brains with AI…

There’s lots of loose talk about how we humans are going to download our brains (or something, something, handwave), or merge our brains with tech of some sort (but what tech, and how? something, something, handwave). Sometimes people even claim they’re the first to have these ideas, and that makes them <drumroll> ‘a visionary genius, who will be vindicated in time’.

Nonsense, I say. I’ll explain why here.

Fictional brain downloading

Brain downloading (whatever that is supposed to mean) has been around in science fiction circles for decades. This nice listing gives a first explicit mention of brain downloading as 1962¹, and brain uploading as 1964².

Of course, the AIs give different answers: with one saying 1930 (Bing Chat)³, another 1958 (ChatGPT)⁴, and finally 1968 (Bard)⁵. I guess it all depends on the training data these AIs use: there is a whole wiki devoted to brain uploading, so AI training regimes don’t even scrape the public websites properly...

Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash

Merging with human brains with AI

Elon Musk wants to merge humans with AI. How many brains will be damaged along the way? ‘The brain implant company Neuralink is pushing a needlessly risky approach, former employees say.’

Elon Musk is probably the figure most identified in the popular mind with claims that we puny humans will have to merge our brains with AI, or the mAchINes will eat us or skynet us or something:

Musk’s own words, is “to achieve a symbiosis with artificial intelligence.” His goal is to develop a technology that helps humans “merg[e] with AI” so that we won’t be “left behind” as AI becomes more sophisticated.

Previous versions of this idea discuss things like brain downloading or uploading. I take it that developing a technology that allows humans to merge with AI means implanting some device connecting your brain to something or other.

Let’s take these ideas one-by-one.

Brain downloading, considered seriously for a moment